Adventures in Europe, Part II

It’s wine season! While telling us about our region (Baden), the IES staff recommended on weekends we travel to the little villages in the area who will be having festivals to debut their wine. So today, we went to Pfaffenweiler, which is a half-hour southwest of us. I’ve decided I’m retiring here. Unfortunately, I’m having trouble loading pictures, so for now you can look at one I’ve found on google images. I actually found a type of wine I liked enough to buy! Unfortunately, however, I’m still not feeling at my best, and I still don’t have tylenol to make it better. I ended up leaving early because I was getting cranky (and cold and wet), and a creepy man sat next to me and kept trying to take the wine bottle that was sticking out of my purse.

Pfaffenweiler from the Air

On an unrelated note, I thought I’d share a story about Freiburg. On the old East Gate of the city, there’s a painting of a man with a few vats behind him. It’s a pretty nondescript picture, so you would normally walk right past it. During our city tour, my group’s task was to ask a local about the story behind it. Apparently, once upon a time, there was a rich, stupid man from the neighboring Swabia who decided one day that he would buy Freiburg. This man must have been really stupid, the storyteller emphasized (over and over again), because you clearly can’t buy a city whose name means “free town.” The man, really stupid, ja?, loaded up all of his gold and jewels in vats to take to Freiburg, but he was caught by his wife. When he told his wife his plan, she told him that he was really stupid and couldn’t get away with it. But, since when do husbands actually listen to their wives? So the next day he heads to Freiburg and announced he is buying the city. “You are really stupid,” they told him. “You can’t buy us; we are free people.” “Ah, but see how rich I am?” Then he opened his vats, which were filled with sand and stone. His wife, who is not stupid like her husband, had switched the vats in the middle of the night, and the really stupid man was laughed out of town. The storyteller really got a kick out of this story.

I’ve never been to a war-torn country before. Not that Germany is at all torn by war at the moment, but it was not so long ago when much of this beautiful city was destroyed. Yesterday when I was wandering by myself looking for a German equivalent for Target, I wandered into the Munsterplatz: a square with a gorgeous cathedral. Of the buildings surrounding the square, one stuck out in particular. It was a red building with a multi-colored roof whose architecture seemed a little more stereotypically German than the rest. Today, we were taking a tour through the city and ended up in the same square. It was then that I learned that the cathedral and my little red building were the only buildings on the square to have made it through the bombing of Freiburg during World War II. “Everything else was completely flat,” our guide told us.

They also showed us the Stolpersteine (SHTOHL-per-STINE-eh), which means “Stumbling blocks.” These are little gold plaques mixed in with all the gold cobblestones with the names of Freiburg Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. I understand, certainly, that war can be necessary. Hitler was a madman who needed to be stopped. It’s a sad, sad world when the actions of a 12-year government can simultaneously lead to the distruction of a great nation’s past and future. Living in a country with these daily reminders of what war can do to a country has really helped me understand the German reluctance to go to war, even in cases where it is necessary.

Freiburg After the Bombs

After a 2-hour drive, three flights, and a bus ride- with luggage that weighs about as much, if not more, than I do- I’m here!

My brand-new, bright orange dorm puts CMC to shame. My room is huge, has a decently large closet, and a TV (which is worthless with my lack of German, but a nice touch nonetheless). And, unlike most German dorms, it has internet! Rather, it will once my “housing tutor” (a German student who was hired to serve as a liason to the Americans in his dorm) looks at my computer and figures out why I can’t log in. Five other students live in the apartment: one Chinese girl and the rest are Germans. Two will not arrive until October. (The German universities operate on a much different schedule). The two I have met both seem like nice girls, and they both speak perfect English. I met them after I cleaned up a lot of mz makeup cases, (an eyeshadow shattered so everything was COVERED in pink makeup), and left them all out to dry because I couldn’t find any towels- paper or otherwise- in the apartment . I was hoping to ease people into the fact that Iäm not always the most organized. Instead, “Hi! I’m an American slob who can’t speak your language!”

I’m happy to discover that food is much cheaper here than in France. I had a huge pasta dish last night for dinner for three euros. Today I splurged on a Turkish lunch at “Restaurant Harem” for €5.70! I was rather amused to be seated under a copy of the Last Supper, but one student decided that Jesus hung with prostitutes so the decor was still appropriate.

Other German observations and anecdotes:

• The women here wear little, if any makeup. I know I’m still pretty made up for an American, but I felt a bit cartoonish walking around with highlighted cheek bones, blush on the apples, and bronzer in the hollows, base shadow,  crease shadow, and filled in brows. I doubt I’ll get to the point where I’ll feel so cartoonish that I stop wearing make-up entirely, but I’m certainly going to wear less tomorrow.
• Beer tastes better with lemonade mixed in. They call this drink a Radler, which made me think of the word Fahrrad (bike), so I confused the waiter when I ordered a bicycle when he asked me if I wanted another drink.
• Today, I stepped into Germanys oldest building: a hotel that was built in 1120!
• There are condom ads everywhere. A current campaign features various fruits wearing condoms. So far, no bananas, surprisingly. The poster outside my tram stop shows a protected pear, which made for an immature moment with our breakfast of pears and croissants.
• My first night out concluded without anyone getting into a fist fight over me.  Apparently, that’s just a French thing.

Miss you!